1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an air cushion, and more particularly, to a foldable air cushion for folding as a container directly to load articles.
2. Related Art
Nowadays air bubble sheets or polystyrene are widely used to wrap articles, but still cause problems of poor buffering effect or environment pollution. To solve the drawbacks, an air-packing bag made of resin films is developed. The air tubes are formed by thermal-sealing. A pneumatic hole is also configured for filling air. After air is filled into the air tube through the pneumatic hole, the air-packing bag may be used as a buffer material of internal packing.
Please refer to FIG. 1. An air-packing bag 10 is composed by plural air tubes 11, which are bended to form a first sidewall 12 and a second sidewall 13. However, this type of air-packing bag can only provide four-side buffer forces of the top, bottom, front and rear sides. It has no protection effect for lateral buffering. When all the six sides of a wrapped article need the buffering protection, two of the air-packing bags will be needed to combine together, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,000,767.
Please refer to FIG. 2. The first sidewall 12 and the second sidewall 13 have film 14 at their two sides. Through thermal-sealing means, the first sidewall 12 and the second sidewall 13 are coupled with the film 14 to form a containing space 15 therein. Then a wrapped article is loaded into the containing space 15 of the air-packing bag 10. However, when the thermal-sealing means couple the film 14 to a position that is too close to the first sidewall 12 or the second sidewall 13, the first sidewall 12 and the second sidewall 13 will push and press each other, thereby causing the reduction of the containing space in the air-packing bag 10. On the other hand, if the thermal-sealing means couple the film 14 to a position that is too far away from the first sidewall 12 or the second sidewall 13, the first sidewall 12 and the second sidewall 13 will has a gap in between, thereby causing no buffer protection from the air tubes 11 can be used for the wrapped article at the lateral sides of the air-packing bag 10. Besides, the operation procedures of the thermal-sealing means to couple the film 14 are more complicated, which make the manufacturing cost of air-packing bag 10 substantially increase. Moreover, common external packing boxes are rectangular cardboard boxes. Arc protrusions 16, considerably protruding, will be formed at the two lateral sides of the air-packing bag 10 while thermal-sealing the film 14. That makes the air-packing bag 10 very difficult to be loaded into the rectangular cardboard box after wraps the wrapped article, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,629,777.
In Taiwan Patent No. M278659 “Air tube Piece for Cushion”, an air-packing bag is configured with cutting lines by poking-line means to be torn apart and folded as a six-side buffering container. Not only the operation processes are increased, but also raising the manufacturing cost of the air-packing bag.
Therefore, to improve the structure of the air-packing bag to form a containing space without using thermal-sealing means to couple the film, avoiding various-sized containing spaces and poor buffering protection at two lateral sides, solving the drawback that the air-packing bag cannot be easily loaded into the rectangular cardboard box, and further reducing the manufacturing cost of the air-packing bag, becomes an issue that the inventor of the present invention and those practicing in the art are eager to develop.